Methods and compositions are described for culturing and improving metabolic activity of cells on flexible supports.
Cultured cells and cells grown on solid supports are useful for a variety of in vitro and in vivo tissue engineering purposes, including wound healing. Scaffolds seeded with cultured cells are used for tissue regeneration and repair. Maintaining high metabolic activity of cultured cells is desirable to develop tools and devices for tissue repair. Metabolically active cultured cells are useful in a variety of applications including tissue repair and tissue regeneration.
Although there are many methods and compositions available to promote wound healing, including wound dressings, some wounds do not heal satisfactorily. Treatment of wounds preferably includes wound closure. Some of the wounds that require special care in healing include open cutaneous wounds including burn wounds, neuropathic ulcers, pressure sores, venous stasis ulcers, and diabetic ulcers. Wound healing is generally perturbed/impaired when one or more of the wound healing processes are affected.
Some of the conventional wound dressings include moist occlusive dressings, dry non-occlusive dressings, polyurethane films, colloidal particles, hydrogels, foams and alginates. However, the difficult-to-heal wounds such as diabetic ulcers and pressure sores do not heal timely and properly with the use of such conventional dressings.
Some of the devices for enhancing the healing of wounds, especially chronic wounds (e.g., diabetic wounds), use adherent cells such as keratinocytes grown on a transplantable solid support (e.g., microcarriers such as collagen-coated beads, plastic chips) in an enclosure such as a bag. The cell-coated solid support (e.g., beads) is placed in a biocompatible enclosure, and the solid support along with the enclosure is placed on the wounds. However, the beads may create friction and may deleteriously affect efficient wound healing. The beads may also restrict the amount of keratinocytes that can be applied on wounds to promote effective healing of wounds.
Materials and methods that support growth and functionality of cells, capable of being mass produced, and capable of being used for tissue engineering purposes would be useful.